Good Witches Don't Lie (Academy of Shadowed Magic Book 1) Read online

  Chapter Two

  He was pure darkness, pressing away light. I couldn’t even make out a face—just the general shape of him.

  Huge. Imposing. Seething with menace.

  I didn’t have time to grab my can of pepper spray or kick anyone in the jewels. He swept forward, enveloping my mouth with one freezing hand and dragging me—heels scraping along the floorboards—straight out into the living room.

  When we got to the front door, it was already wide open, light from the street pouring slantwise into the outer stairwell.

  The door was open. It had been open to the wide world for some unknown amount of time.

  Just like when Mom and Tamzin disappeared.

  He swept me up over his shoulder, his body like dry ice against mine, and brought me out into the street. Outside, the night was frigid and whipping with wind. But it still wasn’t as cold as my kidnapper.

  This guy was the dictionary definition of cold. He was colder than the inside of an industrial refrigerator—and I had been inside enough of them at my various jobs to know.

  All of which is to say, I was practically numb by the time he carried me up the steps to the street like no more than a sack of flour. Actually, less than that. Over his shoulder, it was like I weighed nothing at all.

  When he turned left down the sidewalk, I caught a last glimpse of Loki emerging into the stairwell. He let out a long yowl from the door mat as the man carrying me fell into a jog.

  The last I saw of my cat were his green eyes, round as coins and staring after me, luminous and haunting in the night.

  Someone else came alongside; another figure had fallen into a run next to my kidnapper. As we passed under a streetlamp, I glimpsed him. This one was exactly the same: repelling light, swirling with darkness.

  This wasn’t possible. This couldn’t be real.

  You’re dreaming, Clem. You’re dreaming again.

  And I knew the best way to get out of a bad dream. It always worked, those rare times I realized I was dreaming.

  I just had to yell. Yell and yell and yell until I woke up.

  Except when I tried to scream, I found my voice wouldn’t respond. It was as though my vocal cords had shut down, so that when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. Just a long, furious exhalation of white, crystallizing air.

  That was when the Spitfire kicked in.

  I felt her seeping into my veins, willing me to fight back. When it came to fight and flight, I had never flown from anything. And despite the fact that these guys were terror incarnate, I still didn’t feel the instinct to fly.

  I wanted to kick his ass.

  But the coldness of my captor, what I’d described as “dry ice,” dulled all my adrenaline. His contact sapped my heat as soon as it entered my body.

  Come on, Clem. Kick him. Punch him. Do something.

  But the tremendous impulse heating my veins died to nothing by the time it reached my hands and my feet. I found myself clawing only feebly at his back.

  I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been able to kick or punch him, because under my fingers there wasn’t any real solidity. Just a strange, unnerving give, like I was sinking my fingers into tar.

  So I did the only thing left for me to do.

  I poured all my energy into lifting my head. Behind us, the street unspooled as he ran. The two of them moved fast—unbelievably so. We must have been covering ten miles an hour.

  I wasn’t a runner, but I knew one thing: that was impossible. Especially not for this long. And as far as I could tell, these guys weren’t even winded.

  The figure carrying me said something to his friend. But it wasn’t in English, or even in typical human speech. Whatever he said sounded like tires over gravel. Think ASMR, but the opposite of pleasant and soothing. Downright shiver-inducing.

  As soon as he’d said it, we turned right off my street, headed deeper into Southeast DC toward the Anacostia River.

  Were we going to cross the bridge?

  My question was answered by the rush of the river flowing behind me and the sound of my captor’s feet in the brush.

  We weren’t headed to the bridge. We were headed right to the steep embankment leading down to the water.

  I had just decided to offer them every last cent in my checking account—of which there weren’t many—when we stopped.

  I opened my mouth, but the guy carrying me hauled me off his shoulder and set me down on my bare feet in the gravel and brush. It was cold and piercing under my feet, but with his hands on me, I still didn’t have the strength to do anything but catch my breath.

  Before me stood my two captors, eschewing the light off the nearby streetlamps. I could tell they were looking at me, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t even see eyes in those depths.

  In the second his hands dropped away from me, I found my voice. I was Rational Clem again. “Look, I have money. It’s all yours.”

  The two of them seemed to consider this, standing solidly under the moonlight. That tires-over-gravel sound came from one, and was returned by the other.

  This time, it sounded sharp. Decisive.

  “Lots of money,” I barreled on, inhabiting my lie. “And I can get more. If you want to rob a bank, I’m your recon girl. I’m very good at talking my way—”

  My kidnapper’s hand rose, gripped my arm. He spun me around toward the river, gave me a shove so that I stepped painfully forward through the brush and fell to my knees on the gravel.

  They were going to throw me into the river.

  This wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t a dream at all.

  I was a nineteen-year-old, jobless, part-time student. Why had they picked me? I didn’t know why any of this was happening.

  And that was terrifying and infuriating.

  The two of them crunched through the brush at either side of me, and one of their impossibly cold hands gripped my left arm. On the other side, the same.

  So this was it.

  Just as the two of them lifted me up off my knees, lightning cracked through the sky. There’s no storm coming, I thought as my head jerked up. All the same, my eyes were seared by a flash of white light.

  A fierce wind whipped up. My hair blew straight into my face as my kidnappers’ hands shrank away from my arms. Their cold left me, and the Spitfire’s heat that had surged from my belly into my veins now relit like kindling.

  What sounded like wood tapped against the sidewalk behind us. Once, then twice.

  “All right, gentlemen,” came a woman’s voice. “Time for you to step into the dunk tank.”

  I turned around just in time to spot the edge of a gnarled staff whipping through the air at me.

  No—not at me.

  At the kidnapper on my left.

  The staff clocked him right in the head with a whiff of smoke. The woman jerked it back, jabbed him in the chest with the end of it. It hissed like she’d branded him in the sternum.

  Down he went, tumbling over the embankment and splashing into the river below.

  She swung the staff around, her white hair swirling around her head as my other kidnapper stepped toward her.

  He must have been twice her size—and width. She wasn’t very large. And she looked ancient.

  But with a click of the tongue, she nodded him forward. “You want to try it? Come on, then. I’ll give you one shot.”

  Still swirling with darkness, one arm shot straight out at her throat as he lunged toward her.

  I gasped—this was about to get brutal for her—just as she swung the staff up and deflected his arm away from her neck.

  As soon as the wood made contact with his arm, it hissed. That gravelly noise emerged from his mouth.

  It had burned him. The staff had burned him.

  And then, just like she’d done with the first guy, she popped him right in the chest and sent him, too, rolling down to the river.

  One-two, gone.

  Just like that.

  Goosebumps flowered up my arms. I stared at the
woman before me as the wind tapered off. Her hair settled around her head as she turned her face toward me, all the fine angles of it overlaid with wrinkles.

  Yes, she was old. And sharp-eyed as anyone I’d ever seen, those violet irises surveying me with something between mirth and imperiousness.

  Before either of us spoke, a meow sounded.

  Out of the darkness pooled Loki, his green eyes wide as he rushed up to my ankles and rubbed against me like I had a can of wet food in my hands.

  I exhaled with surprise, pulling him from the ground and into my arms. It was rare that he allowed me to hold him, but right now he purred like a boat’s motor.

  At this moment, his warmth was life.

  The ghost of a smile appeared on the woman’s face as her eyes dropped to Loki. “Well done, sir.”

  I held him tight, my eyes never leaving her. “Who are you?”

  She lowered the tip of her staff to the sidewalk, where it clicked on the asphalt. “Ah, no ‘Thank yous’ or ‘You’re amazings.’ I’d expect more from you, witch, but then you are uninitiated, after all.” She paused. “The better question is, why am I here?”

  Had she said witch? My mind circled that for a second before I processed her question. “Why are you here, then?”

  “For you.” She tipped her staff toward me. “And him, I suppose. He has guarded you well enough.” Her eyes had dropped again to my cat, still purring against my chest.

  My left eyebrow—always the skeptical one of the pair—rose. “Guarded me?”

  “To adulthood. He’s your familiar, and now that you’re an adult, I imagine you can finally hear him properly.”

  I felt an impulse to back away. Was she a crazy person? I mean, a badass crazy person with a staff, but…

  “She’s never heard me properly,” a deep voice sighed in my arms. “Always thinks I want food. It’s a wonder I’m not fatter.”

  I nearly dropped Loki. And then I realized, looking down, that the voice had come from my cat’s mouth.

  He stared back up at me. “Ah, so you’ve understood. It’s about time.”

  The woman wasn’t crazy—I was crazy. I met eyes with the old woman. “Do you hear this cat talking? Not just ‘meow, meow,’ but in multisyllabic words? In English?”

  “The question is not whether I hear it, but whether you do.”

  Loki huffed. “All this time, you thought I was really just a cat? I mean, what about that time you locked yourself out of the apartment and I unlocked the front door for you?”

  I swallowed. “I just…thought you were clever. And curious. And liked to play with the deadbolt.”

  I swear he rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, because the deadbolt’s so fun to play with.”

  “You… You sound exactly as moody as I’d always imagined.”

  Loki spread the toes of one paw, examining each before giving them a desultory lick. “What did you expect—Pancake the tabby from next door?”

  “Is Pancake a familiar, too?”

  Loki scoffed. “Pancake’s just a cat, sweetheart.”

  My eyes lifted to the old woman. “You said he’s my familiar.”

  She had been smiling at our exchange. “For seven years. And he’s done his job—especially this evening.”

  “I’ll tell you, it’s been a long-ass time since I ran that fast.” Loki shifted in my arms. “Not gastronomically pleasant after a heavy dinner.”

  “You saved me?” I couldn’t even begin to comprehend it. My cat had saved me from…what? From who? I didn’t even know what to call the men who had kidnapped me.

  “Well, I sounded the alarm for Ms. Headmistress here, at least.” Loki’s green eyes shifted to the woman. “Who as usual got to swoop in and save the day.”

  “Sounds like he was talking about me,” she said. “But I don’t speak cat, unfortunately.”

  “Yeah,” I said distantly. Was I actually translating for my cat? “About how you saved the day.”

  A cloud passed over her violet eyes. “I very nearly didn’t. And that, my child, would have been catastrophic for those who serve light.”

  My child. She had been referring to me. I resisted the (strong) urge to tell her my actual age; this was almost invariably a case of anyone under the age of twenty-five being considered a child.

  Instead, I focused on the last bit.

  “Those who serve light.” From my mouth, the words sounded almost ridiculous, like I had stepped into a game of Dungeons & Dragons. “And those guys you knocked into the river…they’re the forces of darkness.”

  “Ah, you see? She’s not a total dullard.” The woman’s eyes twinkled as she exchanged glances with Loki. “And she’ll need it at the academy. She’s already behind a year. Well, she’s a whole childhood behind.”

  I cleared my throat, still clutching Loki and resisting the shivers. Before I could process her words, the woman unhooked her gray cloak and brought it off her shoulders.

  When she swept it around me, I couldn’t even object; I was enveloped by marvelous warmth. She stepped close, her scent like citrus, and brushed back my hair to clasp the cloak at my neck. “There you are. Better?”

  I nodded. She only wore simple white robes beneath, but when her fingers touched my neck, they practically scalded me. And, for the first time, I noticed that she seemed to radiate light.

  In fact, the streetlamps above us actually seemed dimmer than her.

  She’s the opposite of my kidnappers.

  Familiarity washed over me, and I stared into her eyes. Déjà vu, maybe, or she might have just had one of those faces. “You look like someone I know.”

  Those violet eyes studied me in intense silence. “Is that so?”

  The feeling passed as quickly as it had come. All at once, she looked like any other old woman.

  “Anyway, thank you,” I said as Loki poked his head out from the edges of the cloak. I stepped back. “‘I’m going to get home. It’s late, you know, and I’ll need to call the police and all—well, after I’ve gotten un-frozen.” I touched the edge of the cloak. “Is there an address where I can mail this to you?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible any longer.”

  My skeptical eyebrow went up again. “Which part? Calling the police or mailing cloaks?”

  The old woman set her hand on my shoulder, her face serious as death. “The forces of darkness await you at your home.”

  Chapter Three

  My skeptical eyebrow rose higher. “They await me there, huh?”

  Loki turned his face up to me. “What do you think I was trying to tell you before you went to bed?”

  I shook my head, still absolutely confounded by the fact that my cat could open his mouth and words came out. “You were only meowing. Why couldn’t I understand you then?”

  “Because the idea of understanding me had never entered your mind.” He gave a pink-tongued yawn. “I was always saying things. You just didn’t hear.”

  Frustration burned in my chest, and I swiveled my gaze up to the old woman. “Listen, lady, I’m a nineteen-year-old who, until tonight, worked at Corner Mart Grocery. I’m nobody.”

  The old woman lowered her chin until her eyes bored into mine. “No one is nobody, child. But you? You’re a witch. The last one in the world.”

  I took another step back to put some distance between her and me, pulling Loki tighter to my chest.

  “Hey”—he scrabbled against my grip—“don’t take your disbelief out on the cat.”

  “My bad,” I breathed. There on the sidewalk, the old woman just gazed at me until I was ready to speak again. “A witch. As in…‘Come in, my children,’ and then you toss them in an oven?”

  She made a face. “The Grimm brothers weren’t fond of witches. But you have the general gist of it.” Something seemed to catch her attention, and her eyes flicked beyond me. “Walk with me. I’ll tell you more.”

  I half-turned, staring down the street into the darkness. I didn’t see anything, but as the old woman started
toward the bridge, her staff clopping beside her like a walking stick, I felt a compulsion to follow.

  Just because you can’t see anything in the darkness, I thought—not for the first time in my life—doesn’t mean there isn’t anything there.

  I started after her, picking my way out of the brush and carefully stepping down the sidewalk. It didn’t hurt anymore because my feet had gone numb on the cement. “Where are you going?”

  “Across the bridge.”

  “All right, across the bridge. Sure.” I fell into a fast walk after her, Loki bobbing in my arms. “And what will we do on the other side? The metro is closed.”

  As we came to the bridge, it was uncannily silent except for the river. The few times I’d driven across this bridge, it had always been loud with traffic. But that was, of course, at a sane time of the day.

  “We’re going to get in a car,” she said simply. “And then I’m going to drive us to the airport, where we’ll take a flight to the school. It’s the only safe place for you now.”

  I paused, staring after her. She kept walking at a brisk pace, so I fell into a jog after her. “The school? I live here. I’m a recently-employed, part-time student. I have a life.”

  She didn’t stop walking. Her free hand flitted through the air. “Pish posh. You’ve got more in store for you than freshman composition and an introduction to Microsoft Office.”

  How had she named two of the three classes I was taking?

  Loki poked his head farther out from the cloak’s edges. “They’re nearing. Tell the headmistress as much.”

  “What did your guardian say?” The woman Loki had called the headmistress didn’t stop, or even slow. “It sounded like a very urgent meow in my direction.”

  Then it hit me.

  “You really can’t understand my cat, can you?” Which was not something I’d ever imagined myself asking another person. But in the bizarro realm I’d walked into, I suppose it was perfectly normal.

  She had reached the center of the bridge. “He’s your familiar. Only you can understand him.” She’d said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And I could swear I felt Loki sigh in my arms.